RFI (Request for Information)
A formal question sent from the field or a subcontractor to the design team when the drawings or specs are unclear, missing, or contradictory.
Why it matters
Building from a guess is expensive and sometimes dangerous. An RFI creates a paper trail showing who asked what, when, and what the official answer was, which matters later if there's a dispute about who's responsible for a mistake.
On a real project
A framing crew notices the drawings show a wall in two different places on two different pages. Instead of picking one, the superintendent files an RFI, and the architect issues an official answer within a few days.
Who this matters most to
A Project Engineer usually owns the RFI log directly; tracking dozens of open questions and their response deadlines is exactly the kind of detail-heavy responsibility new engineers get handed early in their career. A Superintendent cares from the other direction: every open RFI can mean a crew standing around waiting on an answer before they can keep working.
Where this goes wrong
A framing crew hits a discrepancy between two drawings and, rather than waiting on an official answer, the foreman just picks the interpretation that seems obvious and keeps building. Weeks later, the architect's actual intent turns out to be the other option, and the finished wall has to be torn out and rebuilt, a cost and delay that a two-day RFI turnaround would have avoided entirely.
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